James Earl Jones, the versatile actor perhaps best known for the baritone voice he lent to CNN, Darth Vader of Star Wars and King Mufasa of the Lion King died Monday in Pawling, N.Y. He was 93.
Jones overcame a childhood stuttering problem to become one of the most recognized and sought-after voices in the entertainment business.
“One of the hardest things in life,” Jones once said, “is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.” He also recalled growing up that “stuttering is painful. In Sunday School, I’d try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.”
But Jones would have the last laugh, overcoming the stutter and using his basso profundo voice to get roles with gravitas. He received three Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award in his career.
Jones was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1985. Seven years later, in 1992, he was presented with the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2002, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2009 and the Honorary Academy Award in 2011.
Jones made his film debut in Dr. Strangelove (1964). He received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Claudine (1974). But his career really took off when he gained international fame for his voice role as Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, starting with its original 1977 film.
Jones’ other noteworthy roles included in Conan the Barbarian (1982), Coming to America (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Sandlot (1993), and The Lion King (1994). Jones reprised his roles in Star Wars media, The Lion King (2019), and Coming 2 America (2021).
In 1970, Jones played boxer Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope, his first leading film role. His performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, which made him only the second African-American male performer after Sidney Poitier to be nominated for that award.
Jones was born in Arkabutla, Miss., on Jan. 17, 1931, the son of Ruth and Robert Earl Jones. But he spent much of his youth being raised by his maternal grandparents in Michigan and Jones once said the transition was so unnerving that he developed a severe stutter and didn’t speak for years.
“I couldn’t talk,” he recalled. “So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.”
A high school English teacher discovered that Jones had a gift for writing poetry and when Jones began reading his poems aloud to the class, it helped him overcome the stutter.
Jones has appeared on television regularly since the early 1960s. One of his most noteworthy roles was as writer Alex Haley in Roots II. He is heard by millions when CNN identifies itself during commercial breaks, saying simply but powerfully, “This is… CNN.”
Jones made his theatrical debut at the Cort Theatre in New York — renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre two years ago, in 2022.
